A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
for smelt- 
ing in blast 
furnaces, 
and for 
puddling. 
524 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
who devoted themselves for three generations to the im- 
provement of the trade. The turning-point in the history 
of the industry may be dated however at 1760. In that 
year the Carron Works were founded; and the blast furnaces, 
which Roebuck erected, were built with a view to the use of 
coal, Still, the progress was not very rapid till about 1790. 
when steam-engines were introduced to work the blast- 
furnaces. With this more powerful blast they were able to 
save one-third of the coal hitherto used in smelting. The 
old blast-furnaces had been worked by water, and considerable 
ingenuity had to be exercised in order to get a powerful and 
uninterrupted blast? The effect of these improvements was 
unprecedented, and in 1796 the production of pig-iron was 
nearly double what it had been eight years before. Mr Pitt 
had proposed to tax coal in 1796, and pig-iron in 1797, but 
he was forced to abandon both projects. When the latter plan 
was revived by Lord Henry Petty in 1806, the Bill passed the 
second reading by a narrow majority, but was dropped in 
Committee. The returns which were made, and discussions 
which took place in connection with these proposals, have 
put on record an immense amount of information in regard 
to the manufacture of pig-iron, at the time when these new 
inventions caused it to advance with the greatest rapidity. 
Shortly before these improvements in blast furnaces had 
been introduced, two very important inventions had been 
made by Mr Cort, of Gosport; in 1783 he obtained a patent 
for converting pig-iron into malleable iron with the aid of 
coal, in a common air-furnace, by puddling?; in the following 
year he obtained a patent for manufacturing the malleable 
iron into bars, by means of rollers instead of the forge 
hammers which had been hitherto in vogue. Like so many 
of the other inventors, Mr Cort derived little personal benefit 
from inventions which have been of world-wide importance, 
which pig-iron had been converted into bar-iron with the help of charcoal (35. 87). 
Statistics as to the amount of coal and wood consumed in these works just before 
this invention will be found in Whitworth, Advantages of Inland Navigation, 
Pp. 3. 89 (table). 
1 Scrivenor, History of the Iron Trade, 87. 
2 See the account of the Devon Iron-works (Clackmannan), in 8ir J. Sinclair's 
Statistical Account of Scotland (1795), x1v. 626, 
$ Roebuck also had claims to this invention,